Is Purim Violent?
by Rabbi Jeremy Rosen
For hundreds of years the very idea of Jews rejoicing publicly was deemed offensive to Christians. The story was often perceived not as a celebration of deliverance, but as a glorification of violence. In 2006 Elliot Horowitz published “Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence.” It caused a stir. He was criticized for highlighting examples of Jewish violence over the centuries against their enemies real or imagined. But to be fair, he also catalogued the far greater problem of how Purim was perceived negatively. And countering the myth of Jewish passivity and weakness.
Here are some examples of the negative from Christian Europe. Martin Luther, the founder, so to speak, of Protestantism said in 1543, “The Jews love the Book of Esther which so well fits their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous, greed.” The Lutheran theologian Johannes Hempel ( 1891-1964) “ the Book of Esther is hate-inspired wish-fulfillment showing how far the fantasy of pursuing vengeance can go amongst the Jews.” In 1953 German Professor Curt Kuhl asserted that “the enthusiastic embraced by the Jews whom the book of Esther is a favorite, testifies to the narrow-minded fanatical nationalism.”
England too has a long strain of Jew hatred ( occasionally interspersed with some Philo- Semitism, which also spawned disparagement of the Book of Esther. Arthur Stanley Dean of Westminster in 1864 said “the book of Esther, the feast of Purim, is the continuance of bitter animosity of the Jewish nation. Purim was long retained in all its intensity as the natural vent of the hatred that Jews felt towards their heathen or Christian oppressors in each succeeding age.”
The popular adventurer Sir Richard Burton wrote in 1880 that “the Jews should be seen as the deadly enemy of all mankind, his fierce passions, fiendish cunning, combined with abnormal powers of intellect with intense vitality and with persistency of purpose which the world has rarely seen and whetted moreover by a keen thirst for blood engendered by defeat and subjection, combined to make him the deadly enemy of all mankind. As are his wild lust for money.”
In the United States (despite its being marginally less antagonistic than Europe) disparagement found fertile ground and support. Reverend John Peters of Saint Michael's episcopalian church in New York had a book published by Harvard University press in 1932 that says that “the book of Esther, characterized by clannishness, religious arrogance which found expression in the insistence on the exclusive character of the Jewish race and its destiny as ruler of the world.” Mary Ellen Chase in “the Bible and the Common Reader” expressed distaste for the atmosphere of hatred and lust for blood which runs throughout the Book of Esther in which a narrow and fanatical patriotism everywhere takes the place of religious feeling. And of course, we all know about Henry Ford and Reverend Coghlin’s vicious anti-Judaism.
But it was not just Christians who found the Purim story distasteful. Writing in the Jewish Chronicle in March 1890, the founder of Liberal Judaism, Claude Montefiore, argued that he would not be sorry if a festival like Purim, which did not seem to very much have going for it except for its strong streak of Jewish nationalism, were simply to wither and disappear from our festival calendar. He pointed out that, even if it were divinely decreed that ‘some must ingloriously perish that others may live and become a blessing to the world … no cry of triumph must be raised over a vanquished foe.’
Claude Montefiore, the founder of the Reform Jewish community in England, wrote in the Jewish Chronicle in 1890 “Purim is inappropriate today” and expressed the hope that Purim would one day lose its place in the Jewish religious calendar.
In 1946 Mortimer Cohen rabbi of Philadelphia’s Beth Shalom synagogue expressed his disgust at the violence in the book of Esther and the triumphalism of the Jews. In 1963 Samuel Sandmel, from the Hebrew Union College, wrote “ the scroll of Esther seems to me at one time to have no place in scripture because of its barbarity. I have no fondness for the close of the book which describes the slaughter of foes.” As with Hamas today, no mention of who initiated the crisis.
Even in Israel, Samuel Hugo Bergman, rector of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said, “the holiday of Purim may proceed as a Folk Festival, as a religious festival however, it had only negative value, its continued observance has to be understood as a consequence of the deep decay of our people.”
Without even going into the question of whether or not the Jews had the right to protect and defend themselves, all this shows how the Jews instead of being cast as victims are always portrayed as evil aggressors. The strain of antisemitism that is still washing over the entertainment industry and academia in the West only underlines how important it is to celebrate Purim and our pro-activity and dynamism in refusing to be cowed . Purim is the festival of our survival.
I confess I do not feel comfortable with excessive drunkenness that has come to define the festival nowadays more than before. But the carnival atmosphere, the sketches, the Purim Torah, the gifts, the charity, we are commanded to observe by the Book of Esther and our Oral Law, all go to making Purim the happy highlight of our year.
This week alone, three violent Hamas supporters on three continents were declared non-guilty despite calling for the death of Jews. Can you imagine what would have happened had they called for the death of Christians and Muslims? It makes Purim all the more relevant. We will not accept violence against us without reaction.
As the Latin saying goes , “ Nil carborundum illegitimi.” Which, out of delicacy, I will not translate. But AI can do it for you.
Happy Purim
Jeremy Rosen
March 2025
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Jeremy Rosen was born in Manchester, England, the eldest son of Rabbi Kopul Rosen and Bella Rosen. Rosen's thinking was strongly influenced by his father, who rejected fundamentalist and obscurantist approaches in favour of being open to the best the secular world has to offer while remaining committed to religious life. He was first educated at Carmel College, the school his father had founded based on this philosophical orientation. At his father's direction, Rosen also studied at Be'er Yaakov Yeshiva in Israel (1957–1958 and 1960). He then went on to Merkaz Harav Kook (1961), and Mir Yeshiva (1965–1968) in Jerusalem, where he received semicha from Rabbi Chaim Leib Shmuelevitz in addition to Rabbi Dovid Povarsky of Ponevezh and Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Shapiro of Yeshivat Be'er Ya'akov. In between Rosen attended Cambridge University (1962–1965), graduating with a degree in Moral Sciences.